A Desktop Wallpaper Poem

This is so cool (I hope you think so too): Issue Magazine has turned my little poem from Witchcraft, “Mamihlapinatapai”, about the near-untranslatable Yahgun word from Tierra del Fuego, into desktop wallpaper!

Sharanya Manivannan

My first book of poems was Witchcraft (Bullfighter Books, 2008). Between 2008 and 2011, I wrote a column called "The Venus Flytrap" for The New Indian Express. I'm working on two collections of poetry (Cadaver Exquisito and Bulletproof Offering), a collection of short fiction (The High Priestess Never Marries) and a novel (Constellation of Scars). I received the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009 and a 2012 Elle Fiction Award, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. I was specially commissioned to write and perform an original poem at the Commonwealth Day Observance at Westminister Abbey in 2015.

These are the things I have done or hope to do.

In the meantime, pieces of my poetry and fiction appear frequently enough to keep me happy, in places including Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Wasafiri, Hobart, The Nervous Breakdown, Pratilipi and Superstition Review; and anthologies from Bloodaxe Books, Tranquebar Press and Sundress Publications. My non-fiction has appeared in places like National Geographic Traveller, The Caravan, Motherland and Killing The Buddha. On this blog you'll find links to these as they are published, unedited versions of my writing that appears in newspapers and magazines... and nowhere near as much chaos, miscellany and whimsy as life actually contains. :) You can find some of that, though, on my Tumblr.